Privacy Policy

Who we are

This service is operated by Christopher Catlin. For any question about your child’s information, or to exercise the rights below, email hello@giggleleap.com.

If you join the waitlist

We keep the email address you give us, whether you said you are a parent or a creator, and the date you joined. We use it only to tell you when Giggle Leap opens. It is not shared with anyone and nothing about your child is asked for. To be taken off the list, contact us at the address above and we will delete it.

What we collect from your child, and why

Body position, while a story is playing. The camera is used to work out where your child’s arms, shoulders and hips are, so a story can tell whether they reached up or clapped. This is done by software running inside your browser. Each frame is examined and immediately discarded. No video is recorded, no frame is saved, and nothing from the camera is sent to us or to anyone else.

Pieces, in games. Some games let children play with their own cups, soft toys or balls as pieces. To recognise them, a small photo of the toy and a description of how it looks (colours and shape, as numbers) are kept in your browser on this device only. They are never sent to us or anyone else. No photos of children and no children’s names are kept; a grown-up can give a toy a nickname. Pieces not used for 6 months are deleted the next time pieces are used or the Pieces page is opened, and you can remove them, or forget all of them, under Pieces in the grown-ups’ area. Withdrawing camera permission forgets them too. If a grown-up turns on test mode, simple counts of how often pieces were recognised are kept on this device too, and are cleared with them.

Playing together. Up to four people can play together, children and grown-ups alike. Where this device is fast enough, each player stands on their own colour and the camera follows everyone at once; otherwise they take turns in the middle of the picture, where the star is. Either way it works out only where each body is, never who anyone is: no names, no faces, nothing remembered from one turn or one visit to the next. If you tell us the players’ ages (2–3, 4–5, 6–7 or grown-up), that is used only while the page is open, to pace the turns, set how fast a game goes for each child and put suitable stories first. Ages are never saved and never sent anywhere.

When several people play, this device checks how quickly it can follow everyone and remembers only which way of following it was fast enough for — a fact about the device, never about a child. Clearing your browser data removes it.

One still photo, only for “show me something” questions, only with your permission. Some stories ask your child to hold something up. Answering that takes one photo and sends it to OpenAI to be described, then discards it. A photo of a child counts as personal information under COPPA, so we ask for this separately and confirm you are the parent by card payment before it is ever switched on. If you decline, those questions are skipped and everything else works.

The microphone, if you allow it. Some stories ask your child to say an answer out loud. The audio is turned into text by software running inside your own browser, on your device. No recording is made, nothing is written to disk, and the audio is not sent to us or to anyone else — the words are compared against the answers the story’s author wrote, and then discarded. This needs a one-off 43MB download the first time. Decline it and those stories ask for a movement instead. When a story asks for claps, the microphone also listens for the sound of claps, again inside your browser: it measures only how loud each split second is, to tell when hands met, and keeps nothing.

Your browser’s own speech recognition is switched off. Browsers offer a built-in way to recognise speech, and in Chrome it works by sending the audio to Google. We do not use it unless you specifically turn it on, because it would mean your child’s voice leaving this device and going to a company we cannot speak for. It is off by default and asking for it is a separate question, confirmed by card payment like the photo above.

Unexpected answers, only if you allow it. When your child says something the story’s author did not anticipate, and only then, the words they said — as text, never the recording — can be sent to OpenAI to work out which of the author’s answers they meant. The character still only ever says lines the author wrote. This is off by default, asked separately, and confirmed by card payment like the photo above. Leave it off and an unexpected answer gets a gentle “say it again?” instead.

Who else receives it

OpenAI receives the single still photo described above, and the text of an unexpected spoken answer, each only if you allowed it. They receive nothing else — no video, no audio, no name, and nothing identifying your household.

What we send is not saved into OpenAI's systems for reuse, and is never used to train their models. They do keep it for up to 30 days in their automated abuse-monitoring logs, after which it is deleted.

We use no advertising networks, no analytics services and no social plug-ins. Nothing about your child is sold or shared for advertising, ever.

How long it is kept

Camera frames are discarded as they are examined, within a fraction of a second, and are never written to storage.

The still photo, where permitted, is not stored by us at all — it is sent, described, and discarded within the same request. What OpenAI does with it while answering is described above.

Which way of following everyone this device is fast enough for is stored on your device, as described above.

Your permission choice is stored on your own device so you are not asked again. It stays until you withdraw it or clear your browser data. It holds your choices, the date, and a reference to the payment that verified you — never card details.

We do not retain personal information about a child indefinitely, because we do not retain it at all.

What you can do

Withdraw permission at any time. Open the grown-up controls during a session and press “Withdraw permission”. The camera stops immediately and the stories that need it stop working.

Review or delete what we hold. We hold no information about your child, so there is nothing to send you and nothing to delete. If you would like that confirmed in writing, contact us at the address above.

Refuse the parts you are not happy with. The photo question is optional and stays off unless you turn it on.

Security

The strongest protection here is that almost nothing is collected: there is no database of children to breach. Where information does travel — the one still photo — it goes over an encrypted connection and we keep no copy of it. What OpenAI keeps is set out above.

Written information security programme: available on request.

Changes to this policy

If we change what we collect or who receives it, we will ask for your permission again rather than relying on permission you gave for something else. Your stored choice records which version of this notice you agreed to, so an old agreement cannot quietly cover a new use.